


At the End

by CandlelightFool



Category: Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: AU, Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-11-22 20:48:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20880434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CandlelightFool/pseuds/CandlelightFool
Summary: Another rumour was hushed, to say a revolution was averted in its infancy would be an exaggeration, but the fairytale died with a whimper, and Gleb had neatly typed up his report and closed the case.





	At the End

**Author's Note:**

> So I was listening to Still / The Neva Flows (Reprise), and I decided that it wasn't dramatic enough.

Staring through the large glass window, Gleb finally spied Anya, who now downed in splendour, carried herself no less regally than she had in the cold, dusty streets of Leningrad. She had been beautiful then, she was beautiful now, Anya had not needed jewels and rich fabrics to shine. There had been something about the girl, delicate and vulnerable, that had pulled him in at first glance, and made him senselessly chase her across borders, duty as the prerogative, and yet.

And yet, Gleb might have let her go before, but he had learned his lesson.

For a moment, Gleb saw only his own reflection in the glass, his shabby clothes and bitter face. Ridiculed by what had been the Russian elite, who had so narrowly escaped their fate like fat, drowning rats, and still believed themselves above a Soviet man. Familiar resentment hit him with a sharp burst. Betrayal lingered and finally propelled him forward, brazenly inviting himself into the grand hallway, and leaving the darkness of the evening outside. While his mission remained unchanged, his conviction bolstered and he was once again an agent of duty, first and utmost. As his father had been until the end, tasked with deliverance at a price. If any questions remained about that faithful night, this at least, was never shrouded in doubt.

"Gleb," Anya cried in surprise, instinctively stepping back at the unexpected sound of his entrance. Her heels clicked loudly on the marble tiles, and her gloved hands hung uselessly by her side. Shock at his appearance silenced her momentarily.

Gleb regarded her, a yearning for denial burning like the dying embers in a winter night. It is hard to sleep in the cold, and harder yet to dream. There was this hunger in him that had always needed to be fed like a fire, but she had burned him with every artful look and smile. "Anya, you have been hard to catch alone."

"I wasn’t aware I needed to be caught."

"Still, Anya? You continue to spin your underhanded lies? Skilled you must be, for look at you now."

"They weren't lies," Anya told him, lifting her chin in defiance, diamonds sparkled around her throat and her crown did not encumber her. It never seemed to do to those who bore it with born indifference, until it was too late.

Looking at her unapologetic stance, Gleb would have been insulted by any other words. "Paris is no place for a good and loyal Russian." 

"We are both good and loyal Russians."

Lies had become her, and like a flower they bloomed with the simple promise of spring. Thorns had sprouted in its wake; and he would close his hand around it. "I've come to take you home."

"My home is here now."

"Stop playing this game, Anya! I beg you."

"We both know it's _not_ a game, Gleb."

"If you are really Anastasia," Gleb started, repulsion painfully evident in his voice. "Do you think history wants you to have lived?"

"Yes!" Anya exclaimed, a desperate and vulnerable edge to it. "Why don't you?"

Gleb scoffed, as he pulled out a gun from his coat, that while hardly a weight in his hand, had been a weight on his soul. "The Romanovs were given everything, and gave back _nothing._ Until the Russian people rose up and destroyed them."

The hope of reconciliation flickered at her stricken look, but it was just as quickly snuffed out.

"All but one,” Anya needled him in a fit of careless anger, pale and undaunted. "Finish it! I am my father's daughter."

At that, Gleb aimed his service weapon at her with precision and purpose, the lines of his face unforgiving. “And I am my father's son," he returned, and then released the safety pin of his gun with a foreboding click. "My mother said that he died of shame. I never understood, and he _never_ gave me the chance to ask.” Gleb’s voice rose and broke with tension. “To what end, if he freed Russia, once and for all?"

"Gleb," Anya implored softly, unable to keep her eyes from the weapon.

"If you're_ her_," Gleb continued, sounding far away. "The shame of letting you escape, of not completing the task, could drive a man mad. Can't you see, finish it I must.”

Looking up at his face, Anya met his declaration with the same tenacious pride of character.

"Do it then!"

The command prickled, and yet her blue eyes were blazing and alive, burning with daring.

"I wish it could have been different," he confessed, and in his mind he could see the respectable life they would have lived, leaving fairytales for nights around the hearth. But it was a stranger he saw, an unbending enemy, a threat to the state and a risk to his mind, yet her eyes were the same. "Were things already set in motion that very first morning? Confess and all can be forgiven. Anya, Russian still has a place for you.”

"My future stopped in that cellar in Yekaterinburg."

"Come with me! Not a soul will need to know."

"I have a grandmother, I have a family. I’m not alone anymore!"

"Is that the choice to which you cling?"

"What about yours, is it your own?" Anya challenged him, taking another step closer. A few more steps were left between them, and she fought the unconscious shivers of fright that the man invoked. There was none of that warm gentleness, that had made his offer of tea a crossroad she had regretted in an idle moment. There had been compassion and a reverence to him that had nothing to do with blood and had touched something within her too. More than one lost morning, she had found her way to a corner of Nevsky Prospect, watching Gleb stand where he said he would be.

Now here he stood before her, with neither kindness nor mercy.

“What choice but simple duty!” Gleb exclaimed with scorn, conviction flowing hot but unyielding. “It’s what Russia demands, my country, my beauty. Something that will outlast us all.”

“See their faces in me,” Anya cried out at that, tears burning. “Isn’t that a way to outlive it either? My parents, my brother and sisters! They will be remembered. Do you want their blood on your hands. Do you want me to scream in terror for _you_?” Then her tone softened, insulting pity bleeding through, like salt to a wound. “Is it to be neighbour against neighbour after all?”

“I will not offer again,” Gleb bristled, his hands did not tremble, but his heart had felt it all and now there was no more room left for even a drop of pity. “We can leave as comrades in arms, or we bury the past right now.”

“I can’t go back, Gleb. Can’t you see that?” Anya pleaded, sealing her fate with another refusal. “My journey ended at last.”

There was a splintered moment of agony, where he drank in her figure, her flushed face of indignation, balled fists and charged fierceness, and then he shook away the awareness of anything but the history she embodied.

“And so it shall.”

The shot ran true and loud, resounding as a sole pang through the room, and Anya screamed, once, then twice. In surprise, and in pain, both acute and piercing. The red of her dress darkened, blooming around her chest, like a mere play of shadows, while Gleb’s face remained an empty mask, and he took aim again with practiced detachment. 

It was then that the sound of footsteps could be heard, hurried steps, heightened voices, that made him take stock of the world around him. The gaudy candle-lit hallway now had the appearance of a mausoleum to him, and blood rushed through his temples. And it was after Anya fell down to the floor, with drops of her blood painting the snow-white tiles, that Gleb almost dropped to his knees in conflicted regret. She scrambled away from him before he could make a move, as if she felt the continued threat, a dazed look on her face, and a fear that hurt him more than he had allowed himself to imagine. 

_How_ her eyes seemed to say, and so Gleb fled, because the cowardice of it ran through him like ice. Might it be, he would wonder, though it would be years from that moment when he disappeared into night as if he was part of it, that the shame of his father had been tied to the innocence lost and that his death had been one born of guilt and the need for atonement?

Another rumour was hushed, to say a revolution was averted in its infancy would be an exaggeration, but the fairytale died with a whimper, and Gleb had neatly typed up his report and closed the case.

One day, Gleb would have children of his own, and the day would come, that his children will turn to him with shiny, questioning eyes and hushed words, fascination brightening their young faces. They will wonder about a world of palaces and crowns, Grand Duchesses and their own grandfather, and Gleb will shake his head and tell them not to ask.


End file.
